Jacksonville residents say they crave real ties with the sheriff

As Jacksonville's crime problems grow, urban leaders and residents point to a growing divide between themselves and the police.

MATT GALNOR

It was another mini-milestone cementing Jacksonville's stranglehold as the state's murder capital.

Three dead in nine hours. All separate incidents, including a 16-year-old shot on his bike.

Mayor John Peyton and Sheriff John Rutherford called out the news cameras and brought supporters to a Northside park.

They lobbied for their proposed city budget, which features more money, more police to make it safer.

As the media packed up that July evening, Rutherford left to walk a neighborhood.

Not by Hollybrook Apartments in Northwest Jacksonville or through East 28th and Buckman streets on the Eastside near any of the recent killings.

He drove to Arlington for a scheduled walk through a middle-class stretch of homes off Fort Caroline Road.

Suburban neighborhoods, not Jacksonville's inner city, have been the scene for the majority of Rutherford's walks since 2006, according to records provided by the Sheriff's Office.

"As far as seeing him up and down our community, he never comes," said Eunice Barnum, president of the Sherwood Forest-Paradise Park Community Association, a high-crime Northwest Jacksonville that had a double slaying this year.

As Jacksonville's crime problems grow, urban leaders and residents point to a growing divide between themselves and the police. They say they used to see more police, there used to be better relationships.

Rutherford bristles at that notion and says things have improved since he was elected sheriff in 2003. The only thing that could be done to improve the relationship between his department and the inner city is adding 225 more officers, Rutherford said.

But there's a different story inside the neighborhoods.

And there's one name that keeps coming up in that story: Nat Glover.

Walking in Glover's shadow

Pieces of Glover's imprint remain in the department he took over in 1995, becoming Florida's first black sheriff since Reconstruction.

His policies, including putting officers' names on patrol cars, drew the ire of the police union - whose members voted to back Peyton over Glover in the 2003 mayoral race.

Ask people in the high-crime neighborhoods about police, and many bring up Glover.

His popularity in the predominantly black neighborhoods is due to far more than his skin color.

Glover was more visible, they say, referencing his popular neighborhood walks.

Residents knew police more, they say, and saw them out of their cars more - part of Glover's intense push for more community-oriented policing.

Others talk about an "us vs. them" mentality that they say is fueled by Rutherford's passionate and constant strike to go get the "gun-toting thugs."

"I can't help but think there's something different under Rutherford," said Gary Bright, a Westside fuel delivery driver.

Police union boss Nelson Cuba says if there's a difference, it's because officers are spread too thin. Cuba compared the relationship with the community to a marriage, saying it takes time to keep the relationship solid.

From 1997 to 2007, calls for service have increased 32 percent, while the number of sworn officers is up 11 percent, records show.

'It's tough to follow a legend'

Glover, who declined to comment for this story, pledged to walk every neighborhood and took to the streets more than 400 times in his eight years. The events had a rock-star quality. A president (Bill Clinton) and senator (Bob Graham) walked side-by-side with the fast-moving sheriff, as did local politicians and city leaders.

The mission was clear: knock on people's doors and talk to residents about what's going on in their neighborhoods. And officers never knew whose door the sheriff was going to knock on, so they'd better be on their best behavior every day they worked the streets.

Rutherford followed Glover's path in walking the neighborhoods on a much smaller scale. Rutherford says he was on the same pace as Glover, but has tapered off because of "demands on his time," including trying to sell the community on Tasers and the need for more officers.

But records from the Sheriff's Office show differently. Even at Rutherford's pace during his first term, he would still be on track to walk less than 100 times - less than 25 percent of what Glover walked.

When asked about residents saying he's not visible, Rutherford is taken aback.

"You have to be kidding," he defiantly says. "I'm walking those neighborhoods all the time. I'm all over this community."

Rutherford says he visits black churches once a month and provided a list to the Times-Union that showed he's been to about two dozen inner-city churches since 2006.

Rutherford was greeted with rousing applause when he arrived for an April service at Zion Hope Baptist Church on Edgewood Avenue. The Rev. Clifford Johnson said it "meant the world" to his 600-member congregation, who didn't know the sheriff was coming. Rutherford stayed the entire service and met with parishioners afterward, Johnson said.

Johnson said it's difficult to compare Rutherford's relationship with the inner city with that of Glover, whom Johnson called an icon. "It's tough to follow in the shoes of a legend," Johnson said, "but I think he's doing a good job."

Given time, Johnson says, Rutherford will make his own mark.

Glover's walks laid the foundation in the community that the top brass knew what was going on and cared about the problems, Diane Kerr, a West Riverside neighborhood activist, said.

Kerr remembers one walk she made with Glover where he came upon a group of boys hanging out on a corner.

Glover asked them what they were doing and they mumbled a response, staring at the ground.

The boys kept looking down and Glover asked again. This time they reluctantly looked him in the eye, relenting with respect.

"He knew where he was, he knew who he was dealing with," Kerr said.

Cuba, the union leader, said Glover's walks had a "carnival-type atmosphere" and Rutherford doesn't have enough officers to pull as many as Glover did to join the walk and take complaints from residents.

Cuba said Rutherford is continuing the same programs, but just doesn't seem to be able to generate the same media attention that Glover did.

Tips, involvement on the rise

Community policing was a hallmark under Glover, helped by his eight-year run coinciding with the federal push to put 100,000 more officers on the street and get police out of their cars to forge relationships in the community.

Rutherford says there's as much community policing now, if not more, than there was under Glover.

He's short on officers and says he's "cannibalized the department" as much as he can to get more police on the street. There's nothing left but more officers, he says.

Twice since 2006, the City Council has authorized overtime money to send police knocking on doors and walking in communities, what Rutherford calls "proactive policing." Rutherford has also organized more than two dozen walks with officers and community leaders, though the sheriff himself doesn't go.

Since then, tips called into police are up 226 percent, which Rutherford says is proof it will work if he's funded properly.

Rutherford also says citizens' involvement is up in his five years, pointing to more than tripling the membership in monthly Sheriff's Advisory Councils to upward of 2,200 residents.

Rutherford has also made a push with Operation Showdown, sending teams of officers into high-crime areas to go after guns, drugs and prostitutes. About five to 10 officers patrol those areas after the showdown teams leave and spend time talking to residents and business owners - not just responding to calls.

On a recent July night, Mike McCall was one of a handful of officers assigned to hang out at C.L. Page Mortuary. That evening was the wake for a 16-year-old killed on his bicycle outside Hollybrook. The officers were there in case trouble broke out, but none did.

Some people politely acknowledged the police and kept walking. Others went out of their way to greet McCall, the kind of cop who gets hugs from the ladies and fist-bumps from the guys.

When he popped by a housing complex office, he chatted with the workers. They talked about family, if things had cooled off in the neighborhood and if they needed help from the police.

He's been out here 20 years now, riding the same areas and says you have to treat people right, treat people with respect if you want them to trust you.

Make customer service No. 1

Without those relationships, crime will continue, says Joseph Ryan, a professor at Pace University who retired after 25 as a police officer in New York City.

"Police do not like to hear that citizens are customers," said Ryan, who visited 40 cities to evaluate the federal community policing program under President Clinton. "I'm sorry, they are."

And that customer service is lacking now in Jacksonville, residents continue to say.

When Hilbert McDougal lived in Sweetwater 10 years ago, he'd be out in his lawn and see the same officer come by and ask what was happening in the neighborhood. That personal touch is gone now, he says.

McDougal, who runs the Kingdom Cuts Barber Shop on the Westside, also used to hear his customers talk enthusiastically about Glover walking their neighborhood that day. He doesn't hear the same things now.

Rutherford has a walk planned for the end of the month for Zone 5, the most violent of the city's six zones that runs from Northwest Jacksonville west along Interstate 10.

It will be the first time Rutherford has walked that zone in almost a year.

The last time he did, he walked Baldwin, a rural outpost with little crime.